Hello, Darkness
by Alpha Flyer
Summary: The worst thing is the silence.


This was written for **sgteam14283**, for the **be_compromised** Secret Santa. I originally had another of her prompts in mind, but somehow that request for '_anything deaf!Clint related'_ would not be denied. It's perhaps a tad angstier than usual for a holiday exchange, but that's the story that wanted out. To compensate, I gave a bit of a nod to her other request – _Clint and Natasha on a mission, being the awesome spies they are_.

This story is indebted to Fraction's brilliant "Hawkeye #19" (albeit not comics 'verse); if you wanted to, it could be seen as following on the events in my story "Locust Wind", but you'd have to squint a bit. The title is drawn from Simon & Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence."

Thanks to my amazing beta, **Shenshen77, **and my ever-faithful bellwether, **Runawaymetaphor. **I own nothing.

* * *

><p><strong>Hello, Darkness<strong>

**By Alpha Flyer**

* * *

><p>I<p>

_The worst thing is the silence._

The trip to the chopper is a blur of piercing pain and vibrations, sudden jolts and flashing lights - a cacophony of sensations, drenched in the reek of blood and cordite.

But no sound.

No one is shouting at him to stay awake, not even the usual things, like _don't you_ _fucking die on me, Barton_! He can see their mouths flap, feel exhalations on his skin, but … nothing.

There's no whirring of helicopter blades, either, not even when the gravity from a rushed lift-off presses his broken ribs into the gurney.

After the screaming, the gunfire and the explosion, silence should be a welcome thing. Shouldn't it?

But it's not. It's just ... _wrong_.

Gasping for a breath that he cannot hear, Clint is still wondering what happened to_ sound_ when darkness claims him.

...

II

He has no idea how long it's been since he was taken off the chopper and deposited in a proper bed (probably after a bunch of medical procedures he's just as happy to have slept through).

What he _does_ know, though, is that the silence that descended on him after that blast isn't gone; it surrounds him like a shroud that he cannot shake. And it's not for want of trying, even if moving his head feels like a jab with a white-hot knife, right through his skull.

Pain, he can deal with – it tells him he's still alive. This?

Clint opens his eyes to the cold, white neon of the hospital room – light so bright that it's visible from behind closed lids. The Landstuhl military hospital hasn't changed a bit since the last time he'd been forced to avail himself of its facilities. The bare walls are the same, painted in that weird un-white that's supposed to be soothing, except they're even more scuffed and chipped now - decay in the name of fiscal restraint.

_Welcome home, soldier, and thank you for your service. And in case you're wondering, this ain't the Ritz._

'Wounded warriors' get smiles and photo ops from the politicians who sent them into whatever fan the shit's been hitting, but congressional appropriations to upgrade the place where they wake up when they get out of the rotor blades? Not a priority.

At least S.H.I.E.L.D. will be good for some paid leave, in a location of his choice, once he's in good enough shape to cross the Atlantic. Score one for having kissed the army goodbye.

Bonus: Hill (or whoever) seems to have managed to swing a private room for their mangled asset – more than the guys who get shot up for their country in Afghanistan can expect. Clint knows he should feel guilty about that and he tries, he really does. But all he has the energy for right now is to re-learn how to breathe. Shallow, short breaths seem to be the order of the day.

But _dammit_, not being able to hear anything is getting old.

Of course, any novelty that might have held had worn off the first time it had happened. He pushes that thought way back. The last thing he really needs right now is to remember that scared little boy … remember how he'd felt. How he feels now.

He lets out a curse.

He hisses a second, sharper one when the first conclusively establishes that he can't even hear sounds coming out of his own mouth. He regrets wasting that breath immediately though, when it causes his diaphragm to expand far beyond the tolerance of his cracked ribs.

_Short and shallow breaths. _

Contrary to common perception within S.H.I.E.L.D., Clint doesn't ever actually _completely_ ignore physical limitations, or the effects of injury. He may not like doctors, or being told what he can and cannot do with his body at any given time, but he knows damn well that it is the tool he needs to make a living (and a difference). Only a complete moron would ignore what he needs to do to keep himself in working order, or to deliberately wreck his prospects; and contrary to common perception, Clint is not a moron.

For a moment, he toys with the idea of pushing the button that'll release the good meds into his IV. Knocking himself out and letting those bones knit themselves back together is probably the most useful thing he could accomplish right now. How many ribs does the medical chart say he'd broken, presumably when landing after that blast? Seven? Apart from the concussion, the gunshot, and whatever else?

Painkillers probably won't do a fucking thing to bring back his hearing, though. And right now, to be honest, Clint feels entitled to wallow in that thought for a bit – but you can't wallow very well if you're unconscious, can you. No painkillers, then.

Of course the pity party he's about to throw himself brings him right back to Iowa, and … He closes his eyes, for a moment only – maybe an hour? Does time pass when you can't hear the clocks tick?

He wakes up to the movement of displaced air on his skin and a shadow looming over his bed.

Instinct, not to mention years of training and a well-earned sense of paranoia, punches a shot of adrenaline into his blood. His hands are on the assailant's throat in less time than it takes to snatch a fly out of the air, and fuck those broken bones.

The IV apparatus goes flying and Clint vaguely feels the pull on the back of his hand where the needle is (was) taped to his skin; the jolts of piercing pain caused by various broken ribs are dulled by the adrenaline, but only slightly.

So apart from the pain, there are three things Clint that becomes aware of, in rapid succession: One - that none of the things that happened in these last five or so seconds have registered even the slightest of sounds. Two - his hands, splayed around the intruder's throat, are as strong as ever. (Good. No injuries there – no bow issues.)

The third thing - namely that the attacker is a slight Filipino nurse, wearing the traditional blue-and-white outfit and holding a blood pressure cuff - he notices just in time to let go before her larynx is irreversibly crushed.

The woman slides down the side of his bed, chest heaving, presumably retching for breath, or gasping for help – _all in utter silence. _

_Fuck. _

Clint flops back into his pillow, his body screaming in pain, his lungs heaving to take in punishing breaths. He doesn't bother to notice, or care, as the room fills up with medical staff and security personnel. One of them wields a needle – probably a sedative, can you blame them?

Clint doesn't resist.

Now is as good a time as any to be unconscious for a while; beats having to field questions he can't hear, and looking for answers he has no desire to find.

...

III

There are no repercussions from the incident that he is aware of; he's not in restraints when he wakes up. But the next time a nurse enters Clint's room she flashes the lights on and off first, to alert the patient to her presence.

He can tell by the woman's pursed lips that she's probably emitting what she considers encouraging clucks about his condition. (Or maybe she's chastising him about what he did to her colleague?)

Clint closes his eyes and decides to ignore her presence. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Isn't that how it's supposed to go?

_If I can't see Dad, he won't be able to see me either, right, Barney? … Barney? Is that you, Barney …? _

Of course, making yourself invisible requires magic, and magic never really works; Old Man Barton had made sure that little Clinton Francis would have absolutely no illusions about that. The silence that had followed that particular 'lesson' was the same as the one that's surrounding him now.

The new nurse moves around his bed with no-nonsense, deliberate movements, meant to be seen, so as not to surprise. She checks his IV and frowns. Clint has just about decided to close his eyes again and to pretend a little harder to be sleeping when she waves at him to get his attention.

The woman's a pro; gotta respect that; he can feel himself focusing on her almost against his will. She points to his eyes with two fingers, then puts one of them on her lips to draw his attention to the words she is forming.

'_Better?' _ she mouths - deliberately, exaggeratedly. (_Read my lips, Agent Barton._)

"Define 'better', lady", he wants to say, but that's too many words he won't hear himself speak and so he just shrugs. (_Ouch. _Forgot about the collarbone.) Well, there's the honest answer, then:

"No."

At least that's what he thinks he just said – but his lips have formed that particular word often enough that it should have come out right. It's not like saying 'no' is hard.

The nurse shakes her head sympathetically and holds up the little plastic hose with the painkiller button. She raises two fingers, points them first at her watch and then at the clock on the wall, and Clint understands that he should be drugging himself every two hours. It's been at least six since his last shot, judging by that wall clock, and that had been the sedative they'd jabbed into his arm to stop him from going feral.

He mutters an obscenity when the nurse presses the button herself. Shouldn't it be up to the patient to decide just how much pain he wants to be in?

The woman waggles her fingers – must have said that out loud - and proceeds to take his blood pressure as if he was a stuffed, non-sentient toy. But arguing or resisting would require more deep breaths and fucks than Clint is willing to give, so instead of snarling at her he lets it go, and even accepts a few sips of the water she holds up to his mouth.

Swallowing – damn. Not fun. But … hydration is important, and the sooner he can get off that IV, the easier he can control his own meds.

The nurse makes some more signs with her hands and Clint realizes with a bit of a start that she's trying to use ASL on him. Like he'd remember any of that shit? And why would she assume …

Ah, yes. S.H.I.E.L.D. must have shared his medical history, probably prompted by a polite inquiry from the hospital as to who that homicidal maniac in their ward is, and how he got to be that way.

Well, here's how.

_**Barton, Clinton Francis**__: History of unexplained, unset fractures dating back to early childhood, presumed due to domestic abuse. More fractures during adolescence, allegedly due to accidents suffered while training as a circus performer. Profound temporary mechanical hearing loss at age 6, likely due to repeated blows to the ears (unsubstantiated by parents). Hearing eventually restored to app. 80%, over the course of several months._

And suddenly there's Barney, telling him how cool it'd be to learn sign language. Their father would never be bothered with anything of that sort, Barney had reasoned - it'd be like a license to have secrets right in front of the bastard's nose.

And they'd learned, the two of them, from a book their Mom had gotten hold of somehow - Lord knows what she'd sold, or done, to pay for the thing. Oh yes, they'd learned alright. Long afternoons in the barn, fingers flying, giggling at the raised middle one that Barney had insisted spelled "fuck you." He'd made Clint swear not to use that particular sign in front of their father, though, because that'd be the one he'd get for sure, secret language or no.

Clint settles back into the pillow, trying to ignore the nurse who seems to think that he should know a heck of a lot more of that finger talk than he actually remembers. (The only way Hawkeye makes his hands talk these days is by breaking someone's neck, throwing a knife or loosening an arrow. )

_Or when he's with Natasha. _A whole different language, that – one he may never speak again.

Good thing she's off on a mission with Rogers. Fury's been pairing those two up for the last few months, presumably to give Rogers a bit more of an edge, de-nice him a bit. She'll be grateful that she missed the latest clusterfuck; Clint sure is.

Although it would be nice if she'd called. (_Shit. _Shown up? Written a post card? Something. Anything.)

Then again - the last thing he needs right now is his partner, pretending not to be concerned. And him, pretending they're still partners. _Can_ still be partners.

But maybe when he wakes up next time, the sound _will_ have come back, like it had when he was a kid? Maybe that was what the nurse had tried to tell him, talking at him with her fingers and hands like she had? That he'd be fine tomorrow?

Clint can feel (but not hear, although it seems like a close thing, it _does_) his own heartbeat now: _Boom-ba-doom_, each successive _ba-doom _pumping more of those meds into his system.

His fingers are numb already, his arms feel like lead. A welcome lassitude washes into his finger tips, then into his arms, into his brain … Wave after wave, the pain and the thoughts drain away with each beat of his pulse, and …

...

IV

He wakes up to bright daylight filtering in through the blinds in the window - but no more sound than before.

As in, _still nothing_.

Twenty-four hours of medical captivity, according to the rusty wall clock. (Or thirty-six? Forty-eight? More? Why don't those fucking things come with a date?) And nothing to show for it. So much for the overnight cure.

On the other hand, maybe having medically certified immunity against alarm clocks isn't such a bad thing?

Clint spends a useful couple of minutes making a mental list of the things he wouldn't miss if he never heard them again:

Fury, ranting about how he couldn't possibly fight certain types of crime with the Council crimping his style.

Disco music.

Nora in Accounting, kvetching about Delta Team's expense reports.

That fucking rooster in Jalalabad.

Of course, the list is overwritten almost immediately by other, less pleasant things:

No more Springsteen.

No more late-night shows of Pepper setting Stark straight, with Cap offering to pop some corn for a cheering audience in the Tower.

No more Natasha, asking him whether he's eaten anything other than steak and potatoes in the last month.

Okay, that last one could go either way, but … _Natasha's voice_.

The way she says his name, when she's pissed off at him. When she wants _more_ of whatever he is doing with his tongue, and wants it _now. _When she needs his help, and pretends she's only trying to attract his attention over the comm so he won't miss out on the fun.

So here's another kicker: No more voice announcing, _Incoming! _Uttering warnings, _Hawkeye! On your six! _

Clint closes his eyes against the brightening light. There goes that illusion, then: Circus boy, trying to play in the Majors.

What the fuck ever made him think he could keep up with the likes of Norse Gods, super soldiers and geniuses who can fly, or turn into giant Godzilla things able to knock planes out of the sky?

Sure, he'd learned to compensate for his less-than-perfect hearing, making up for it with his uncanny visual acuity, peripheral vision and a handy ability to read tactical movements before they happened, like Gretzky in hockey. And the shooting – that's always been good enough to keep up the illusion, for a few months anyway. (The post-Loki sympathy vote didn't hurt.)

But now?

Now, he can't even fucking take direct orders or hear warnings, and if the incident with that first nurse is any indication, he'll react with a wild flail to anything that pops up unexpectedly (including things that shouldn't be a surprise at all, for people who can hear them coming.)

So much for working in the field. Let alone pretending to be an Avenger.

He can hear Sitwell now: _Welcome to your desk, Agent Barton – we believe you can have a promising career in HR. Make sure you don't give yourself a paper cut._

Life is sure full of its little twists and turns.

A nurse chooses this moment to bustle back in - same one as the last time. The one he'd almost choked to death has probably asked for a different floor - and who could blame her - and this one now has to pull double duty, on account of knowing ASL.

He watches her wordlessly as she does nurse things around the various bits of apparatus he's hooked up to, making a point of looking straight at him and gesturing, every time she says something. And because he keeps an eye on her, he notices when she startles at something that's escaped him altogether.

She looks around the room, searching for something as if she were trying to pinpoint the source of an echo.

Finally, she nods to herself and heads to the little tin closet in the corner and opens the door. Turning back towards Clint, she mouths something that looks like 'phone'_._

Great. So someone's been trying to call him? That'll be a hoot and a half. He'd have made a few phone calls already, if he could…

But before he can grunt some inarticulate protest, she reaches into the closet, hauls out his S.H.I.E.L.D. jacket and grubs through the pockets. Having successfully located his smartphone, she holds it out, squints at him, and shakes her head before walking over to hand it to him.

Her finger stabs at the screen with a grin that's a mix between triumph and … something he doesn't want to examine too closely. But his mouth falls open when he sees what she's pointing at:

_Missed calls: 8 _

_Text messages: 37_

Well, shit.

...

V

There's never a dignified way to realize that you're an idiot, but it's almost tolerable when the insight comes with immediate compensation.

_Text messages. _

The nurse has the good sense to just hand him his smartphone and leave; the first thing Clint does is to switch the thing to 'vibrate'.

He ignores the phone messages for obvious reasons, except for noting whom they're from: _Natasha. Natasha. Hill. Natasha. Rogers. Natasha. Bobbi. Natasha._

He can imagine what the voice mails say based on the text messages, which follow a similar pattern and escalate rapidly, going something like this:

_We're stuck in Uruguay for the next two weeks and it sucks. The bugs? Even Steve has started to swear … You back at HQ yet? N._

_Heard you took a hit. How worried should I be, on a scale of 1 to 10? N. _:-(

_Clint, talk to me! Getting worried here. S.H.I.E.L.D. says you're stable, so no excuse for radio silence. N._

_Heard what happened. We'll get you back to NYC as soon as transport can be arranged. Hang in there, Barton – that's an order! _ _Hill_

_Agent Barton: given that you have sought external medical services, grateful you provide certification and estimated length of sick leave ASAP. HR/McMurray _ (That one he deletes on sight.)

_Clinton Francis. Stop doing that heroic Suffering Alone thing you always do. Although based on what Natasha tells me, you may not be able to use the phone - so just switch the damned thing to VIBRATE! And text the poor woman, you idiot! 3 Bobbi_

_Clint – trying to get back but there are Complications. May not see you until you get evac'd back to NYC. Sorry! A sign of life might be nice though. You have hands? N._

Holding the phone up over his chest as he types should hurt a lot more than it does.

...

VI

The vibrations in the floor are strong enough that they rattle the bed; as a result Clint is on full alert, eyes wide open, when his visitor arrives. Good thing too, because the guy doesn't bother with the light-flickering routine that's become SOP with the staff.

Instead, he simply bursts in like he owns the place, filling the room with his presence - pretty much the last person Clint would have expected: Ironman, in the flesh.

Bits of the red-and-gold armour – mask, chest and arms - open up and partly unravel, but as there's no JARVIS to remove them, Stark just dumps the arm pieces on Clint's bed and keeps what remains of the thing on. Based on the indent the stuff makes on his bed, Clint can only imagine the sound those metal boots made in the bare corridors.

A small gaggle of nurses have crowded into the doorframe behind Stark, but make no move to intervene in the invasion. In fact, most of them look a bit star-struck, and Clint realizes that if any of them were to do anything at all, it'd be to hand Stark something to autograph or throw him their panties.

Ironman takes the homage as his due and after a benevolent nod ignores them completely, facing Clint as a hunter would his prey. He launches into an immediate monologue of some kind, with more and wider gesticulation than usual – but for all Clint gets out of it, there might as well be empty speech bubbles hanging in the air.

He decides to put a stop to the performance before it can turn method.

"Yelling won't make any difference, Stark. I can't hear you. I can't hear _anything._"

He probably sounded pitiful and totally slurred that comment, but how could he tell?

Stark seems to get it though and stops in mid-holding-forth. Gotta hand it to the man - he may be a genius, but he's not stupid. His eyes turn into a mix of laser weapon and basset hound and he makes a _wait here!_ gesture with his fingers. (Like where else would Clint go? Roll his IV around the base?)

Stark pulls a device like an over-sized smartphone out of a chest pocket – that breast plate can't be as form-fitting as it looks - and walks over to the bed. Clint ignores the shooting pain in his ribs, reaches for the tablet and, having learned his lesson about checking for messages, looks at the screen.

"_Here, try this,_" appears in black lettering on the white screen. Stark's words? What he just said?

Clint looks up and frowns his question. He watches Stark nod, and looks back at the screen as he starts to talk again.

"_I see you're your usual welcoming self, Barton_," it says, in a steady stream of black. "_I thought this gadget might cheer you up a little until we work out something better. For now, you got word-transcription."_

Word-transcription?

"Like those phones they have for deaf people_?" _Clint's words trickle onto the screen and stay there, like an accusation – of what and against whom, he's not sure.

Stark looks pained, almost insulted.

"_Please. This is to TTY tech as the iPod is to a Walkman. JARVIS had some input. It's kind of like his un-evolved cousin. It won't talk to you, but you can talk to it._"

"You f**king kidding me_?"_ Clint spits out in reply, although it's hard to tell from the screen what actually came out of his mouth, what with those asterisks. (Also, his own words show up as purple. Way subtle, Stark.) "I don't need any of your gadgets. I'll get better. Done it before."

He glares at the tablet.

"And what's with the censorship?"

"_JARVIS doesn't like it when people swear_," Stark explains piously, according to the tablet. _"It offends him. Let me see your ears._"

"What for?"

In the last two minutes, Clint realizes, he has formed more words with his mouth since … well, since he's been carted into Landstuhl.

"_To measure the inside, of course. This is precision work we're planning._"

Even in writing the man manages to sound patronizing. Maybe it's the font? Clint doesn't get a chance to mull this over, though, since Stark continues without a pause.

"_Banner thinks we can come up with something that'll allow you to hear again. It won't be hearing, exactly, more like secondary vibrations of the cochlear nerve, but your brain won't know the difference. It'll think of it as sound. You'll be as good as new, Barton. Better. We can give you_ _resolution like a bat bouncing signals off a dandelion seed to go with those eagle eyes of yours._"

As good as new? Right. Sure.

He must have emitted some kind of snort, because Stark goes still for a moment, hesitating just a couple of feet away from the bed; since he has the floor, Clint decides to go on.

"What exactly do you think you're trying to accomplish here, Stark?"

The tablet dutifully records his words, but of course for Stark they're sound waves, ready to be plucked out of the air and turned into meaning by perfectly functional hearing. There is no delay in his response; he doesn't have to guess, decipher gestures, or read.

"_I thought that was obvious._"

Clint is tempted not to look at the response but the words are already on the tablet, and what's the point in asking a question if you don't stick around for the answer?

"_Trying to help," _it says. _"You could just say 'thank you,' you know_."

"I don't need anyone's help."

Clint doesn't have to hear himself talk to know he sounds petulant, but … _dammit._ If ever there was a time to let his inner six-year-old out, surely this is it?

Stark rolls his eyes at him, and pulls his mouth into that … that _shape_ it makes when the genius is irritated by the shortcomings of lesser mortals.

"_Suit yourself. But I don't want the team to lose long-range, silent-fire capability. Besides, once Natasha texted us about what happened …" _he gestures vaguely in the direction of the IV array, "_Pepper said she'd kill me if I didn't do something. So if it makes you feel any better, this isn't altruism, but enlightened self-interest._"

So that's how you spell 'altruism'? Who knew?

Clint suspects Tony is bullshitting him, but since having an idea of what people are saying is not that bad a thing - especially if it comes with spellcheck - he shrugs and lets it go.

He points to the tablet and looks Stark in the eye.

"Thanks. I guess."

Tony takes Clint's surrender as an invitation to initiate Phase II. He steps up to the bed, leans over him and sticks some gizmo into first his right ear, then his left. Clint feels a faint clicking, whirring sensation; it'd be tempting to describe it as sound, but it isn't. Not quite. A minute per ear, and Tony straightens up again.

"_There. See? All done. And no new owie_."

Clint probably deserved that.

"F**k you too, Stark."

Tony nods, hesitates a little, opens his mouth and a series of words blooms on the tablet.

"_Pepper says hi, by the way. You probably already know that Natashalie is stuck somewhere in South America with Rogers, killing people in the name of the Greater Good. I'm sure they'd send flowers if they could, but I'm the best anyone could come up with. Sorry about that."_

Some response is probably called for here, and Clint digs in his memory banks. He finds it under "etiquette/polite company."

"Listen, man. I do appreciate this. You coming here, and stuff. Don't think that I don't."

Stark looks oddly uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"_Don't mention it. I had to be in Frankfurt for a conference anyway. Which reminds me …_" He looks at the clock over Clint's bed. "_I'm supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago. Ran into a headwind over the Atlantic. Ta-ta."_

He heads towards the door but turns around once more.

"_Oh, and I assume you must be climbing the walls in here; it's been what, three days? So I had JARVIS load some close-captioned movies on that tablet. Plus, the latest edition of Angry Birds_."

And with that Stark grabs his bits of armour and is gone, parting the gaggle of adoring fans like Moses did the Red Sea, the pieces sliding smoothly into place as he goes.

The tablet clearly has sensitive hearing; the nurses' excited chatter falls on the tablet like snowflakes. "Wow!" and "Was that who I think it was?" and "He's gorgeous!"

Keeping a low profile is a far, far better thing than the Tony Stark approach to the avenging business, as far as Clint is concerned. He pretends he doesn't see the calculating looks a couple of the nurses shoot him in the wake of the Great Man's passing.

"So. Anyone here have a charger?"

When he is satisfied that the medical staff have scattered, Clint examines the tablet. Cousin of JARVIS, eh.

"Okay, MARVIN," he says. "About those f**king asterisks."

...

VII

"Hawkeye, you in place yet?"

Clint resists the temptation to put his hand on his ear. It's taken some getting used to, that … _feeling_ that isn't quite sound, but instead seems to be right inside his head. He tried to follow the explanation of how it works – something about stimulating the cochlear nerves and sending electro-magnetic impulses to …

Truth be told, he'd lost the anatomical thread after a couple of minutes. But the idea of having a gadget of Stark's and Banner's devising tricking his brain into thinking it heard something? _That_ part he'd understood, and questioned.

"What's to stop them from putting stuff in my head?" he'd asked Natasha. She'd been less than sympathetic.

"Like what?" she'd asked. "Try and get you to stop drinking coffee from the pot!"

Rogers had been even blunter about telling him he was being an idiot, and so he'd finally let them stick those things in his ears. (After all, that tablet wasn't entirely evil, once they'd reached an understanding.)

So now he's got a gadget that allows him to function in the world of sound as if he actually belonged there. And those 20 percent of hearing capacity he'd lost to his father's fists? History. Plus, his ribs have (mostly) healed, his head has stopped ringing every time he shakes it, and the gunshot wound in his thigh has joined the list of _remember whens_ that mark his body like a map.

_Field ready. _Clint can't recall actually kissing that little slip from S.H.I.E.L.D. medical, but he just might have.

And so here they are, Delta Team plus Captain America, in a disused steel factory on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. Somehow, the place has become infested with a gang of white supremacists who have turned it into a chemical lab, capable of manufacturing two agents that, once combined, would create enough poisonous gas to envelop several city blocks.

"Affirmative, Cap," Clint replies, rejoicing for a split second in the fact that his ear gadgets come with a two-way option. (No more carting around comms devices that can get tangled up in bowstrings – talk about fringe benefits.)

His perch on the old water tower affords him an excellent view over the entire complex. A full moon offers the only source of light; it reflects off the wet cobblestones between buildings of varying decrepitude. Two vans are parked behind the main building, the only sign that someone may be inside the facility.

The entire gang appears to be holed up in the central building – S.H.I.E.L.D. intercepts suggest they're close to making a move.

And no disrespect to Pittsburgh's finest, but Fury is right: Dozens of cops in SWAT mode but without experience with chemical weapons is about the last thing you want, especially in an encounter with fanatics who looking to compete with Bashir al-Assad for the title of chemical murderer of the decade. Nope, going in small, smart and hard is the only way to wage urban warfare, when WMD are involved.

There are apparently only about ten gang members in this cell, but with the chemical agent right there on site, a direct assault is risky even for people with the skillsets of Captain America and the Black Widow.

Natasha is on the far side of the complex, nestled in the shadows of a decrepit, smaller facility. He can see the moonlight reflecting off the arm of her tac suit as she tosses the little howler towards the main building. It's a perfect pitch, a hundred and fifty feet solid. Clint resists the urge to look over his shoulder as the howler starts to emit a sound like a police siren.

Within seconds, a door opens and light spills out into the courtyard for the briefest of moments, before someone shouts and it goes out. Not total amateurs then.

His eyesight unaffected by the sudden loss of light, Clint reports on their location even as he nocks an arrow.

"That double door with the ripped-off posters on the North-East side. Three of them, heading towards you, Nat. Two by the front door, will need to get around the building to get to the vans. Steve, you can cut them off by the foundry. None are carrying baggage."

"Copy that," Rogers replies. "Natasha?"

The fact that the goons aren't carrying any of their concoctions is another bonus, as far as Clint is concerned. It greatly increases tactical options on the ground, and reduces the chances of sarin gas (or worse) rising to where he's perched.

He can see both Natasha and Steve running towards the closest respective intercept points. There's a pop-pop-pop as Natasha empties her silenced Glocks into her targets; Steve is a blur of motion taking down his in near-silence, punctuated by grunts. (Damn, those earpieces are good.)

"No other movement from the building, so far," Clint reports. But he is forced to eat his words less than a second later, when another van bursts through the side door – an old loading dock?

_Shit._ They probably spent the last few minutes loading that thing with vats of chemical agent, and Lord knows whether the munitions have been filled so as to create the binary yet. Clint aims at the driver and lets fly, watching with grim satisfaction as the van veers to the side and towards a crumbling outbuilding.

He remembers Hill's warning: _Whatever you do, don't give them a chance to combine those two liquids. But if they are what we think they are, individually the substances are harmless, and can be burned._

"Hawkeye, _do it_!"

Cap's command cracks in his ears, and Clint loosens another arrow. The fireball from the explosion illuminates the night; he pulls the gas mask over his face - just in case - and hopes Natasha and Steve have done the same. At least there are no civilian buildings in the immediate vicinity, if things go south.

By the time Clint is at the foot of the tower, real police sirens are approaching and Natasha's atmospheric sensor reads clear. Phew.

"Let's leave the explanations to Hill and Fury," Steve says. "They should be on the phone to the Police Commissioner by now."

Natasha and Clint nod in unison.

"Sounds good," he says for both of them. Return to field duty should _not_ have to involve arguing with the local police over matters of jurisdiction and appropriate use of force.

Satisfied with the response, Steve casts a sideways look at Clint.

"Let's change and go celebrate. Team building, team morale stuff. Dinner?"

Natasha's mouth curves upward in a lopsided smile as she hooks her arm into Clint's. She gently nudges him towards their car, away from the howling sirens.

"Sure. Shawarma or Chinese?"

...

VIII

He can feel her, smell her; sees the curved outline of her body in the dim light that is filtering into the room from the city outside.

"I missed you," she says.

He knows she's not talking about the three weeks before her Montevideo mission had wrapped, and she could come home; they've seen each other almost daily since.

No, she's talking about this - being who they are, doing what needs to be done, doing it together. As a team.

"Me too."

But Natasha isn't done.

"Clint?"

He kisses her shoulder, wondering where this is going, but as long as she stays where she is, it doesn't really matter.

"Hmmm?"

Her tone is serious.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. You shouldn't have been alone, when you woke up and found that you were …"

Her voice trails off, and for a moment, he wonders whether it's because she can't say the word - the one he realizes he's been avoiding himself.

_Deaf._

It's actually easier than he thought, saying it like that. (Well, thinking it.) Besides, if it really bothered her, she wouldn't be here, would she? And that, he realizes, is really the point.

"You were there, though. Even when you weren't."

Okay, that didn't come out quite right, and so he elaborates. Or tries to, anyway - no one will ever mistake Clint Barton for someone who should consider a career in public speaking.

"It took me a while to figure out, but …" He stops, and starts again. "I thought I was alone. But I wasn't. Not really. Not ever."

The truth of that statement settles in his mind for a moment, until he is startled out of his contemplation when she suddenly moves to straddle him. Her next move, though, comes as a surprise.

Natasha smiles and reaches for his face, her hands gliding up his cheeks, her thumbs stroking his ears. She gently removes the hearing aids and sets them down on the bedside table. Clint utters a protest, but she pins down his arms with her hands and bends down for a deep, lingering kiss that leaves both of them breathless.

Deprived of sound, Clint's world narrows to the scent of her shampoo, fading and mingling with others that shaped her day – the faint whiff of cordite, that Lebanese restaurant – and the essence of all that is Natasha.

He surrenders to the silky touch of her skin, the tickle of her hair as it trails over his shoulders, her lips on his cheek. Her tongue circles first one ear then the other, dipping in with a quick lick. He can feel her breath on the side of his face as she shapes a whisper.

And the silence speaks his name.


End file.
